Just a girl trying new things.

Learning Calligraphy

I have always had terrible handwriting. It is so bad that often even I can’t read it and it prompted someone to once ask, “didn’t anyone teach you to write like a girl?” Given that, I didn’t really expect calligraphy to be my calling, but total lack of skill has never stopped me.

Calligraphy requires a special pen called an “oblique.” Oblique calligraphy pens are used because they have a protruding flange (the gold piece sticking out on the side) that forces your nib to write at the correct 45-degree angle. A nib, which is inserted at the end of the oblique, is the part of the pen that actually touches the ink to the paper. Every few letters you have to dip the nib in an ink well. It really made me feel for Thomas Jefferson but also made me think that I don’t have enough feathered quills in my life.

Photo by Karen Watson

I took a class with Molly Margaret, the owner of Esque Script Calligraphy at Paper and Ink Arts. We had four hours of instruction in which she took the time to demonstrate and let us practice the basic technique and strokes as well as each lowercase and capital letter. It was an incredibly intricate and time consuming process which I found I don’t really have the patience or attention span for.

However, it was an interesting class and I always enjoy exploring a new skill. Molly was kind enough to write out the name of the blog for me since her writing looks significantly better than my initial attempts at calligraphy. Unfortunately, in my rush to run off to Sunday brunch I smudged the ink before it fully dried. Oops!

2 thoughts on “Learning Calligraphy”

Funny thing – that’s just cursive plus a fancy pen and a little artistic flair, meaning, 90% odds you were drilled on that in your formative years. Most people utter “thank god” and move to printing at the first opportunity, me included. A few continue to write that way all their life.

Pity they didn’t let us use “real” pens in grade school, there might at least have been a little bit of artistic merit instead of all that lost time on a skill no longer valued.